SunOct302011
Scripture: MATTHEW 23:1-12
Federated people regularly send me articles or links that they’ve found interesting or stimulating, and I’m almost always glad to receive these suggestions and see what our church family finds nourishing. I think the writer that is most often forwarded to me is the New York Times columnist David Brooks. And while I don’t always share his perspective on things, I invariably find his writing illuminating, and I often share his insights with you.
Last week, someone sent me a column of his in which he noted the oddness of the way our minds work. We think we generally operate on the basis of rational considerations. Brooks, though, points out that our behavior is frequently determined by much less conscious factors. Did you know that pro golfers putt more accurately for par than they do for birdie? From the same distance, they make more putts that will yield par than that will yield birdies. All because they fear bogeys more than they desire birdies. Strange but true. Similarly, Israeli judges grant pardons about 35% of the time. Unless they hear the cases in the hour immediately following a meal, in which case they grant pardons some 65% of the time. Or there’s this: shoppers will buy more cans of soup if you put a sign atop the display that says, “Limit 12 per customer.”
We imagine that we choose how many cans of soup to buy based on a rational decision about how many we need. But no. In fact, we decide often on the basis of factors we had no idea about—like whether the item appears scarce, in which case we’ll buy more than we would otherwise. It turns out we’re far less rational than we like to think we are. “People rely on unconscious biases and rules of thumb to navigate the world,” says Brooks. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/opinion/brooks-who-you-are.html?_r=1&emc=eta1).
One of our frequent delusions, where our rational faculties fail us, is that the sins of others seem far greater than are our own sins. Most of us think the other people here this morning sin more than we do. We readily see the speck in the eyes of others without noticing the log in our own eyes (Mt. 7:3-5). Jesus knew it well, which is why he returns to address it during the last week of his life after he’s already made the point during the Sermon on the Mount. We think he’s talking just about the Pharisees in our story this morning, just about the zealots who are far too concerned about their own prestige and power. But he’s really talking about all of us, because as the verses build, he stops talking about “them” (vv. 2-7) and begins to talk about “you” (vv. 8-10), his friends and followers.
As he begins his tirade, Jesus rails against the religious leaders. “They talk a good line but don’t live it” (23:3); they insist on a bunch of lifeless and oppressive rules (23:4); they showily display their faith and claim place of privilege wherever they go (23:5-7). What Jesus knows, though, is that we’re no different from those religious leaders. We’re just as seduced by veneers, just as desirous of privilege, just as eager for special treatment. To adapt that old line from the comic strip “Pogo,” “We have met the Pharisees and the Pharisees are us.” We are just as susceptible to delusions of privilege and convictions of entitlement as any Pharisee ever was. And Jesus knows it. That’s what gets his dander up as his life nears its end.
It’s fair to say, I think, that Jesus is looking for re-formation. He’s looking for followers who are formed again and again in the image of God. And a good part of the re-formation for which Jesus looks is for us to face the deceit and self-justification with which we live so much of our lives, and to change our ways.
One of the things we more progressive Christians often miss out on is the level of expectation that comes from Jesus. Ours is a friendly, affirming Jesus, and we’re noticeably less keen about the rigorous, demanding Jesus who’s such a big part of the gospel picture. “God loves me just the way I am” is a far more popular part of our church mission statement than is the other part: “and too much to leave me that way.” Who of us wants to be prompted to a different way of life? Who of us wants to be pushed into ways of being that we have, for the most part, studiously avoided? Give me the acceptance, but lay off the guilt trip, please!
Matthew’s Jesus offers us a giant corrective to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” Taking Jesus’ lead, Bonhoeffer knew that any sort of grace that allows us to continue in our less-than-stellar behavior is no grace at all. It’s simply a sham. Any tawdry affair or lurid gossip or sleazy financial dealing that is not admitted and corrected is, in Jesus’ eyes, a blight on the face of God.
Those are what’s called sins of commission. The church has long maintained that we fall prey not just to sins of commission, though—the things we do wrong—but also to sins of omission—the things we neglect to do. We ignore the beggar panhandling on the side of the road on our drive to work. We pay scarce attention to the poverty that runs roughshod over our society and indeed the world. We turn a blind eye to the aching neighbor who’s recently lost a spouse. We retire to our dens and drown ourselves in private pursuits, while all around us people fall into poverty and despair.
This is not to say that we can do everything, and that we should feel guilty if we’re not helping people 24 hours a day. It’s not to say that we should beat up on ourselves if we take in a movie or eat a meal out or go on vacation. It’s only to say that if we’re not putting some substantial part of our energy into the care and feeding of a physically and spiritually malnourished world, we’ve succumbed to a Pharisaic blindness and there is something terribly amiss in our lives. A central part of a full and complete and faithful life is acknowledging that we, too, have fallen short, and that we’re called to greatness by being servants.
A re-forming church—what we’re called to be on Reformation Sunday—knows that and works at it. It knows how prone we are to turning a blind eye to our faults, and says, “Look at them. Take a good honest look at your failings, your irresponsibility, your disdain, your carelessness. Admit them. And turn from them.”
What’s so strange about the faith and the church is that there’s a hugely countervailing force in this whole dynamic. All we’ve talked about in this morning’s sermon is what we should and shouldn’t do. And that matters greatly. Crucial in Christian life is the matter of how we live—what we call ethics. What’s missing, though, is the strange and incomprehensible force of the grace we mentioned briefly earlier. We certainly don’t want to promulgate the grace that Bonhoeffer called “cheap”—grace that lets anything go, that too easily excuses all our lapses. But we don’t want to go the other way, either, and deny the power of that wondrous force.
It is extremely difficult, as a Christian, to hold these two things, grace and ethics, together. Ethics is, in a way, cold, hard, demanding. Grace, on the other hand, is warm, soft, inviting. Ethics expects something. Grace offers something. Ethics imposes a burden. Grace provides a relief. Both dimensions are crucial. But how are we supposed to honor them both? How are we supposed to reconcile them? It’s a little like a child hitting a sibling and then hearing from a parent: “I don’t ever want you to do that again. But even if you do, I will continue to love you with a bottomless, relentless love.” If there’s no negative consequence to my sin, what motivation is there for me to do things differently?
This, of course, is the conundrum that makes Christian life endlessly challenging and fascinating. That never-ending interplay between expectation and comfort, ethics and grace. The fact is, I’m going to keep sinning, and God’s going to keep forgiving. You may know that old quip of the German poet Heinrich Heine: “I love to sin. God loves to forgive sin. Really, this world is admirably arranged!”
But there’s another factor here, one we haven’t touched on at all. And it’s what lets us hold grace and ethics in tension, and to honor both. And that is what the church has historically called “sanctification.” It’s the process of being sanctified, of being made holy. And it’s something both that we do and that God does in us. If we take seriously the power of our sin to hurt others, that’s a necessary first step. But then it’s vital that we open ourselves to the power of God to remake us in such a way that we are freed of the hurt and harm we so easily do. As we mature in the faith, with the help of God we become sanctified. We are slowly made holy.
The process of a Christian life, in other words, is a process of responding to the grace of God. It’s never just about God’s relentless affection for us. And it’s never just about some uncompromising demand that we’d better do everything right. God surrounds us with unbounded acceptance. And we respond with lives rooted in love.
It’s this pattern that defines a faithful life—grace and response. If we’re being true to God, we are always and everywhere attending to holy grace first. We are giving thanks, singing, praying, and listening to the relentless promises of scripture, promises that remind us that we are never separated from the love of God. That’s what undergirds our whole lives. Without it, we are nothing. We are but grasping, fearful, self-justifying creatures.
The pattern finds its fruition, though, with our deep need to respond, and to offer ourselves to that grace. That gracious welcome is for naught if it isn’t received and embodied and spread. In a whole host of ways, our response, our re-formation, is critical.
It’s a crucial part of how we define a faithful life here at Federated. This is why, for example, we continually lift up possibilities for ministry. With our GPS emphasis—Gifts, Passions, Skills—we’re seeking to provide opportunities to serve and care. God’s grace comes alive when we help someone find a job with Employment Connections; when we serve a meal at St. Paul’s with Loaves and Fishes; when we go on a youth work camp and help renovate someone’s house. These are responses to grace, acts of sanctification, and they’re crucial. They are grace themselves.
The need to respond is why we include in our baptismal service promises made by the family and the congregation. It’s a way of saying to the family and the congregation, “This child’s faith will only develop as we all fulfill promises to attend worship, grow in faith, and find ways to serve.” These promises are responses to grace, acts of sanctification, and they are crucial. They, too, are grace themselves.
The need to respond is why we make a big deal of stewardship every year. It may not always feel that way, but one of the things most of us have in abundance is money. Compared to much of the rest of the world, we are wealthy beyond belief. One of the best ways we have of filling out our lives is by giving a big portion of our resources away. Not just a few dollars here and there, not just the leftovers, but a sizable chunk. Ten percent of our income is the guideline, because that’s a significant amount. And if we’re not at that level, sanctification is about moving toward that level. This kind of commitment is a response to grace, an act of sanctification, and again, it is grace itself.
And the need to respond is why we tell stories of ministries found and connections made and commitments honored. Forrest Church was a Unitarian pastor. He was the son of the late Idaho senator, Frank Church, and he served a church in New York for many years. A few years ago, he developed esophageal cancer. And shortly before he died, he gave an address to a national gathering of Unitarians. Dan DeWeese recently gave me a copy of his words that day, and I find them stimulating and helpful.
Church said in that speech that there are three things we all need to do before we die: “integrity, or individual wholeness, comes when we make peace with ourselves; reconciliation, or shared wholeness, comes when we make peace with our neighbors, especially with our loved ones; redemption, in the largest sense, comes when we make peace with life and death, with being itself, with God” (“Love and Death,” p. 7).
Yes, grace is ours, a free gift that holds us close. But “all our lives,” as Forrest Church says, “end in the middle of the story.” And if we’re to make peace with the unfinished business we all face, there is some work to be done—work that tidies up loose ends, that extends itself to a needy world, that accepts the limited time we have on earth.
And as we do, we are reminded, at the very same time, that “all is grace,” that our work and our preparation and our service and our giving are all expressions of the love of God working in us with passion and hope and a deep zeal for the remaking of the world. May we constantly be about the work of re-forming, of sanctifying, and may we know, at every instant, that that very work is the living out of the grace of God.